The current invention relates to the field of electronic circuits. More particularly, the current invention relates to improvements in networked computer environments and has particular applications to the transmission of information between digital devices over a communications medium. A wide variety of computer systems and networks exist, each having variations in particular implementations. The present invention will be described with reference to particular types of systems for clarity but this should not be taken to limit the invention, and it will be apparent to those of skill in the art that the invention has applications in many different types of computer systems. The invention therefore should not be seen as limited except as specifically herein provided.
Relevant and well-known network background information is discussed in parent application Ser. No. 08/866,818, U.S. Pat. No. 6,021,495 as incorporated above by reference and will not be repeated in detail here. As discussed in that application, network modularity and flexibility have created increased security concerns and a need to require more complete authentication of a user on a node before allowing that node to see or transmit network traffic. The parent application discusses mechanisms of providing increased network security using link-beat detection at a star intermediate system and a variety of authentication schemes that are called whenever an unauthenticated user connects or reconnects to the star device. One aspect of that invention involves a star system requiring a user to supply some type of password to the star system for authentication.
However, in some applications it will be desirable to provide a system wherein a user's password is not transmitted over the network so that the password cannot be captured by a sniffing device. What is needed, therefore, is a user authentication system that does not require that a user password be transmitted on the network but prevents unauthorized equipment or an unauthorized person from connecting to a network and listening-in on network traffic and verifies the identity of a user prior to allowing the user to send or receive data on a network.